Chase met with Dan and Addie in the lobby, with news about the camera and Carl’s other possessions. “Travis said he found the video Carl took of all the action that night: you, tearing into the one killer as a cougar, some of the guys firing rounds, others running as cougars. All of it. It wasn’t real obvious as to who the people were, especially since they were camouflaged, and of course, he wouldn’t have a clue who the cats were. We’re the only ones who would know that. Certainly, the recording isn’t clear enough to really identify the men. Since he took a video of several of the scenes, I thought we all might want to look at them to see if we find any more evidence of anything.”

“He wasn’t just passing through when he heard gunshots ring out then,” Dan said, realizing Carl hadn’t been telling the truth.

Chase frowned. “That’s what he said.”

“It isn’t true. It would have taken him too long to get there and set up. I had to take down the first man when he fired at the SUV. Carl had to have been there, already set up, and taking the video, if he caught me on video taking the man out.”

“Hell.”

Dan pulled out his phone and called the Denver newspaper and put it on speaker. “Hi, this is Sheriff Dan Steinacker of Yuma Town. I’m calling to check on the credentials of a Carl Nelson. Does he still work as an investigative reporter for you?”

“He quit the paper some years ago. Yuma Town. Yeah, after he said he had a big story in Yuma Town and then nothing came of it, the boss was furious. It was all hush-hush, but in truth? I think he fired him. Carl Nelson isn’t there causing trouble and claiming he’s a reporter for us still, is he?”

“He’s been causing trouble all right. Thanks so much for your time.”

“Anytime, Sheriff. He had to turn in his credentials, so if he’s saying he’s working for us, he’s lying.”

“Thank you.” Dan ended the call and said to Chase, “Did he have any newspaper credentials on him?”

“Not that I saw. We all just assumed he was still working for the Denver paper.”

“Why would he be at your place at that particular time?” Addie asked. “How would he know we were headed to your place when we weren’t even there? Or that there would be some action that he could record? Why else be there? If he no longer works for a paper, who does he work for?”

“I think we need to talk with Carl again.” Dan, Addie, and Chase headed for the room, but Leyton wasn’t outside the room.

They rushed to reach it and pulled open the door. Leyton was trying to pin down Carl, the newly turned cougar, and yelled, “Someone get a tranquilizer!”

So much for questioning Carl now.

The nurse handed Dan a syringe and while Chase and Leyton held Carl down, Dan injected the cat. Addie figured she and Dan might as well return to the safe house. They weren’t going to be able to get anything out of the man, well, cat, now. Not for some hours.

Instead of trying to chain him to the bed, they brought in a large cage, muzzled him, and put him inside to sleep for now.

“We should declaw him too,” Leyton said, showing off his battle wounds.

Knowing Leyton wasn’t serious, they all knew it was dangerous for a cat to have its claws removed, and no way to climb into a tree to protect itself from wolves or other predators.

Kate came in to take care of Leyton’s claw marks, even though the nurse could have done it.

Addie smiled at her for taking care of her mate. He kept kissing her while she tried to bandage him, and Addie thought they were a cute couple. It was interesting to see how growly the cougars could be toward others who could be dangerous, but so affectionate toward their mates.

Stryker was frowning at the two of them, and she swore he was interested in Kate himself. He and Leyton were twin brothers!

“We could throw him in the jailhouse and then you don’t have to waste a bed on him,” Chase said. “He’d be more secure, can shift at will, and have a bigger ‘cage’ to roam free in.”

“Yeah, let’s do it.” Dan said.

Kate handed them bandages for Carl’s wounds for when he shifted back into his human form.

The men hauled the sleeping cat in the cage out to Hal’s pickup and then they took him to the jailhouse. Several of the men carried the cage into one of the cells. Once they set it down, Chase and Dan pulled Carl out of the cage and laid him on the bed, then they removed the cage. Leyton, Chase, and Stryker would take turns staying at the jailhouse to guard him.

“Let’s return to the safe house,” Addie said.

“Bridget and Travis will help with guard duty there.” Dan told everyone where they were going. “I need to pick up a bag of clothes and toiletries, and we need to do some shopping for you.”

They quickly made stops at a drugstore and Millicent’s Mint Julep Boutique, then headed to his place to pick up a bag of his things. The workmen had finished the work on the house and had already left.

“It’s a beautiful home, love the woods, and view of the mountains. I’m glad the men were able to restore it to its former glory. You wouldn’t even know someone had crashed through the back door and bullets had riddled the front.”

“The cougars in town do a good job. We’ve always got someone who has the skills we need.”

She followed him into his bedroom. “Hmm, I like the large bedroom and bath.”

“We’ll have to try it out as soon as it’s safe to return here.” Dan finished packing a couple of bags, and they left the house to get back in the Jeep.

“I need to talk to you about something else,” Addie said when she and Dan were in the Jeep.

“This sounds ominous.” Dan glanced at her, then pulled out of his driveway.

“Mrs. Fitz knows my mother. I’d seen her several times when she came to the house to see my mother before she took off. I never saw Mrs. Fitz again either. I thought they were…well, kind of friends. Maybe they were business associates. Now I don’t know. I called Mrs. Fitz and asked her what she knew about my mother. I wasn’t sure she’d tell me anything, if it was all supposed to be some big national security secret.”

“And?”

“Alicia isn’t my mother. My real mother died in a car accident when I was twelve-months old. Somehow, I survived. Alicia took the place of my mother. She was a faux wife to my father, and then she left when I was eight because her contractual obligation was up. Dad didn’t need her and she didn’t need him. I always wondered why I stayed with my dad, who was warm, kind, affectionate, and everything my mother was not. The photos in Dad’s desk drawers make sense now. They were all of him with my mother, my real mother, when they were married, and of them holding me until I was about one. After that, no more pictures. My dad and Alicia were in a pretend marital relationship like us.”

“It’s not the same with us,” Dan said, and she reached over and squeezed his hand. He smiled at her. “I need you in my life. We might have had a contractual agreement to begin with, but even from the very beginning, it’s meant more to me than you can know. I’m not divorcing you, or ending the contractual obligation in any way. I want this to be real between us. As real as it has been, except without the long absences. I can really do without those.”

“You’re not getting tired of me yet?”

“Are you kidding? You should know all the plans I have in store for us, when we’re not taking down assassins.”

She chuckled. “Like?”

“Remember when we were coming here, and we had the notion of camping up in the mountains, staying in a cave, running as cougars?”

“You still want to do that?”

“Yes. I’d like to find resolution in this, but I still want to do that with you.”

She looked out the window. “You don’t think you’ll have the seven-year itch and then take off, like my mother, uh, pretend mother did?”

“No. If I have any itches, you’ll scratch them and make them go away.”

She smiled and ran her hand over his groin. His cock jerked beneath the jeans, and she smiled again. “I hope no one else has plans for us, because I want you in that soft, non-squeaky bed when we reach the safe house.”

“If anyone has plans for us, they’ll have to wait.”

He parked at the garage, and they got out of the Jeep, with bags in hand, then approached the house.

Bridget opened the door for them. “After I returned home from shopping at the grocery store, I heard all the news from Travis about Carl and Ricky.” She eyed the shopping bags Dan was carrying into the house. “Oh, good, you managed to get some shopping done.”

“It will tide us over for now. Yeah, it’s a mess, as far as Carl being turned, but Ricky will be okay. Do you and Travis want to take Carl in?”

“I don’t even know the man, but from everything I’ve heard Chase say about him, no,” Bridget said. “Not only that, but we can’t be watching him when we go on missions. Hal and Tracey have that big ranch and they can put him to work mucking stalls and with their foreman, Ted Weekum, and Ricky and Kolby, they can all keep an eye on him.”

“They said no.”

“Then a stay in a jail cell sounds like his only option unless someone else wants the chore,” Bridget said.

Addie snagged Dan’s hand. “We’re going to take a nap. See you in a bit.”

“Sleep tight.”

They hurried up the stairs and when they reached the blue room and shut the door, Dan began helping Addie out of her clothes. He unfastened her black lace bra and then pulled off her panties. “I remember that first time we made love,” he said, kissing her bare shoulder blades as she unbuttoned his sheriff’s shirt. “I was envisioning red panties and a bra. But black is just as sexy.”

“I knew you’d want to seal the deal, Sheriff,” she said, running her hand over his badge attached to his belt, then tugging at his belt to unfasten it. “And I sure wanted to.”

He combed his fingers through her hair in a loving caress. “Hmm,” he kissed her breasts, his hot lips pressing against them, his hands cupping her bare buttocks.

She licked his nipple and he quickly sat on the bed and started pulling off his cowboy boots. She helped him with the other, and yanked off his socks and tossed them in the air before they landed on the carpeted floor behind her.

Before he could stand and pull off his jeans and boxer briefs, she pushed him back against the mattress and pressed her body between his legs, rubbing his arousal.

He pulled her higher and spread her legs so she was straddling him. “Hmm,” she murmured against his chest, liking the way he was resting between her legs, even if he was still wearing his soft jeans, his hard erection straining for release, his hands running over her thighs, and moving over her buttocks.

He was so sexually attuned to her, and it made her blood run hot. Their pheromones were wrapping around each other’s, calling for a mating, for release, for the connection.

Her heart was pounding as she rubbed her body against his, but this wouldn’t do. She wanted him inside her. Now.

She moved back and began yanking off his jeans, but it meant climbing all the way off him. As if he didn’t want her to get away, he dragged her to the mattress, and as quickly as he could, he rose off the bed, shucked his jeans, and then his boxer briefs, and moved his naked body over hers, between her legs.

And he began to kiss her jaw. She felt herself grow wet for him, and she wanted to feel him thrusting deep inside of her. He licked her breast and suckled on a nipple. God, he felt good. Wanting to touch him in a way that said she’d claimed him too, she speared her fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. Groaning, he moved his body against hers, rubbing his cock between her legs, teasing her. Then he began rubbing vigorously and she thought he might come outside of her if he didn’t hurry and enter her, just like she was going to come at any second.

“Oh,” she cried, gripping his strong, muscular shoulders, and he slid into her and thrust, making the whole bed move, banging against the wall.

It was as bad as the creaky springs. They couldn’t stop now. He only smiled and she laughed, but then they concentrated on the business at hand as he deepened his thrusts. He pulled her legs over his shoulders, and she felt her world come apart. “Omigod…”

“You’re all right?” he suddenly said, easing up.

“Yes, finish this or I’m terminating you.”

He smiled and thrust harder, her buttocks slapping against his thighs. The headboard kept hitting the wall. Bang! Bang! Bang! Faster! Bang-bang-bang!

And then slower. Bang…bang…bang. He pulled nearly out of her, then thrust again and again, and the headboard kept up the rhythm, finally ending when he found release. He sank down on top of her and kissed her cheeks.

“Hell, woman, you are never leaving me.”

She laughed. “We need to move the bed away from the wall though if we do this again here.”

“I’ll have a couple of the guys help me. I don’t want you moving anything.” He laid back on the mattress and pulled her into his arms before covering them with the blue sheets and blue quilt. “You’re incredible.”

She rubbed her cheek against his chest in a cat’s way that said she thought he was too.

She could deal with mated life if it was always like this with him. He had never acted toward Addie in any way like her dad and the woman who had pretended to be his wife whenever she and Dan were together. It had been so infrequently that she wondered if it would be different if they saw each other every day, day in and day out. The same old routine. Oh, sure, give a speeder a ticket, give a hunter out of season a ticket and a fine, take care of a car wreck. Would living together be boring? Then again, couldn’t she use a little bit of a boring life for now?

What she loved was that she was already making real friends. Cougar friends. And she wanted to help them like they’d helped her. She could see a whole new life for her here. Only if she could resolve this situation. She didn’t want them to have to deal with her issues, worrying that innocents could be caught up in the crossfire. Better that she was gone, dealing with this on her own. Dan had a job here. He was sheriff. They needed him. Even now, she was taking him from his duties. She was certain if she even hinted at leaving the town, he’d be against it. Probably the whole town would be.

Could she solicit Mrs. Fitz’s help if Addie decided she had no other choice but to leave Yuma Town and learn what was going on with regard to her? She sighed and cuddled with Dan. She hoped he’d understand, though after the last time she’d left him, she’d felt bad the whole six months she was gone. She knew she’d done the right thing by him, keeping him out of her conflict, but she still felt bad that she’d involved him in any of this in the first place.

Now she didn’t know what she was going to do as far as who she could trust. Her pretend mother had to have tried to protect her by setting her up with a man who could very well be her mate someday. Even if Alicia had never told Addie the truth, which was understandable because if she was living the lie because of her job, telling an eight-year-old the truth would have been way too risky.

And, even if Addie was wrong, she still felt her direct supervisor was one of the good guys. That made her wonder if Briggs had learned the truth about what had happened to her out in the field that had made her run for her life? Had Alicia learned what had happened to her?

Her pretend mother had never even called Dan back.

And what was the deal with Carl, the fake reporter?

Dan was lying with Addie in his arms, soft, cuddly, perfect for him in every way, yet she wasn’t his. And she might never be his, he thought with regret. Her eyes were closed, she was relaxed, but she wasn’t sleeping, and he knew she was thinking about her situation, mulling over everything that they’d learned, and was trying to sort out who the mole was, who wanted her dead.

He was thinking about it too, having nightmares about it, trying to sort out what was happening, from what was just a dream and what was real. He was thinking about her too, about the long-term, about being with her for the short-term. About not being apart again.

He knew, until they resolved the business with the assassin, she could never leave her old life behind, never begin anew.

He caressed her bare arm, wishing they already knew the truth and they’d put this whole business to rest. And that she’d feel they had enough feelings for each other that she’d make a go of it with him. He didn’t want to be with anyone else.

She seemed to like the townspeople, everyone she’d met so far. He’d seen the way she smiled at the couples who had found their chosen mates. Yet she was holding back from having her own happiness. He worried it went deeper than the business that people were trying to kill her. That she didn’t know how to have a loving, long-term relationship with a guy because she’d never seen her parents have one.

They had been like Dan and her—a contractual agreement, except for him, and it seemed for her, that’s where the similarity stopped.

Knowing she wasn’t sleeping, he leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I want to be mated cougars, to marry you, to make this for real. I understand if you feel you have to wait until you resolve what’s going on with you otherwise, but don’t think for a second that I’m going to let you run off to do this by yourself either.”

She rubbed her hand lightly over his chest, but didn’t say anything. And then he felt a tear drop on his chest, and then another.

“Aww, honey.” He wrapped her tightly in his arms and held her tight. “We’ll get through this together. I promise. But together. You’ve been the Lone Ranger long enough. You have me now. And a whole town full of cougars at your beck and call. We’ll have your back, as we know you’ll have ours.”

Addie burst into tears.

Aww, hell. What had he said wrong?